Ambani-Merchant Wedding: Modi’s Blessing, Kardashian Cameo – What Happened at India’s Wedding of the Year

CNN
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India’s most anticipated wedding of the year came to an end on Sunday after a star-studded three-day celebration, with even the country’s prime minister on hand to bless the young couple.

Billionaire heir Anant Ambani married his long-term girlfriend Radhika Merchant in Mumbai in a lavish ceremony attended by Kim and Khloe Kardashian, two former British prime ministers, Indian sporting legends and some of Bollywood’s most famous faces. The wedding was followed by a blessing ceremony on Saturday, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered well wishes to the young couple and their families.

The weekend’s festivities concluded on Sunday with an extravagant reception, or “Mangal Utsav” (festival of bliss), as attendees left Mumbai.

No expense was spared by the family that owns India’s largest privately held company, Reliance Industries. The conglomerate was founded by Anant’s grandfather and is now run by his father Mukesh, who is worth more than $122 billion, according to Forbes.

The Ambani-owned 16,000-capacity Jio World Convention Centre, where weddings took place all weekend, was transformed into a miniature version of India’s holy city of Varanasi, with floral decorations and extravagant decors adorned with gold and silver.

The couple changed outfits several times during the three-day celebration, appearing in a series of intricate, tailored garments that celebrated the country’s heritage and culture.

Merchant’s bridal ensemble was designed by Indian label Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla and featured ivory zardozi (an elaborate type of metal embroidery) on silk and a 5-meter (16.4-foot) veil. She completed the look with jewelry that her aunts and sisters wore to their own weddings. She later changed into an opulent red and gold outfit for her “vidai,” the ceremony in which Indian brides symbolically bid farewell to their relatives before joining their groom’s family.

Ambani, meanwhile, hit the red carpet in a gold sherwani paired with sneakers. For the wedding ceremony, he wore a custom-made red sherwani by Sabyasachi Mukherjee, with a large green chain around his neck.

For Saturday’s blessing ceremony, Merchant once again wore a custom-made piece by Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla, who collaborated with contemporary artist and sculptor Jayasri Burman to create a one-of-a-kind piece embroidered in real gold.

The garment celebrates the couple’s union “through deeply meaningful imagery,” Merchant’s stylist Rhea Kapoor wrote on Instagram. “The human figures representing the happy couple exude a celestial aura that honors the divinity in their humanity. The fauna represents Anant’s love for animals, especially elephants which are considered auspicious and beautiful.”

For Sunday’s reception, guests interpreted the “Indian chic” dress code by combining classic Indian fashion with contemporary styles. Merchant wore a gold metallic corset from Dolce and Gabbana’s Alta Moda couture line, paired with a skirt and dupatta in the same hue by Indian designer Anamika Khanna.

It’s not known exactly how much the Ambanis spent on the festivities, which included months of pre-wedding parties, though industry estimates put the total in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Insiders worked for months to bring the couple’s vision to life, collaborating with family to pull together the intricate details from the floral arrangements to the set designs.

Famed wedding designer Preston Bailey, who has worked with Serena Williams and LeBron James, was commissioned to create massive floral art installations for the weekend.

In an email interview with CNN ahead of Friday’s ceremony, Bailey Ambani’s mother Nita praised the attention to detail. It was “nothing short of pure genius and she is truly focused on bringing India’s tremendous creative talent to the world through these weddings,” he said.

Bailey’s designs were inspired by the couple’s love of animals and Ambani’s recently opened Vantara animal sanctuary in the western Indian city of Jamnagar. His sculptural creations include a giant display of hot air balloons and more than 60 floral animals, including giraffes, two enormous toucans, monkeys perched on trees in the venue and a giant horse made of red and pink flowers.

“I have been in the business for over 40 years… (but) I have never seen anything as intricate as this wedding and I believe it will generate such positive feedback and awareness for the amazing creative culture of artists in India,” said Bailey, who also worked on the weddings of Ambani’s two elder siblings, Akash and Isha.

Top Indian couturier and creative director of the wedding, Manish Malhotra, previously told CNN that “preserving the essence of India” was his “guiding principle.”

“Every detail, from the decor and cuisine to the attire and ambiance; every event, from the lively Sangeet (a traditional evening of music and dance featuring a performance by Justin Bieber) to the ceremonial wedding day and grand reception, is designed to immerse guests in an atmosphere of joy, love and celebration,” he said via email.

Criticism and sustainability

Details of the festivities dominated local headlines and sparked a social media frenzy, but many in India, the world’s most populous country with 1.4 billion people, criticized the opulence in a country with a stark wealth gap and millions living in poverty.

“Shame on people for celebrating income inequality in a country where we need wealth redistribution,” tweeted comedian and social media critic Shamita Yadav, who posts on social media under the name The Ranting Gola.

“We are a really poor country,” Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research Sushant Singh told Indian news outlet The Wire. “This is something that is completely unacceptable. But the fact is that half of India’s major media is owned by Mr Ambani, so it is unlikely that India’s major media will say this is terrible.”

In addition to the financial costs of the wedding and festivities, there is another, less visible cost: the cost to the planet.

An average Indian wedding of 300 people typically generates between 1.5 and 2 tons of waste and about 30 to 40 tons of carbon emissions — not including guest travel — according to Ashwin Malwade, co-founder of Greenmyna, a Mumbai-based sustainable wedding consultancy. Sources of emissions include large-scale banquets and energy used by extravagant light shows.

An event as large-scale as the Ambani-Merchant celebration would emit far more carbon than even the biggest, most lavish Indian wedding, he added. And then there’s the travel, with several high-profile attendees pictured leaving Mumbai via the private jet terminal at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport.

Malwade also pointed to the carbon footprint of the Ambanis’ wedding party in Jamnagar, which was attended by global personalities including Mark Zuckerberg, Ivanka Trump, Bill Gates and Karlie Kloss; the four-day cruise organised for guests in the Mediterranean; and the emissions associated with flying in singers such as Rihanna and Justin Bieber to perform at various events.